Major Dallas Freeway Interchange Is Truly Texan in Scale, Aesthetics
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Major Dallas freeway interchange is truly Texan in scale, aesthetics he Texas Department of Transportation incomplete without delving into the scale of (TxDOT) has identified five top rea- this truly Texas-sized project. The inter- T sons for building the sprawling new change, through which approximately Interstate 635 and U.S. Highway 75 “High 500,000 vehicles travel daily, connects the Five” interchange in Dallas. North Central Expressway (U.S. 75) and the The facts that it will be colorful and LBJ Freeway (I-635) directly north of down- attractive are not among them. But thanks town Dallas. to a design by TxDOT personnel, the skills Once the site of regular rush-hour traffic and artistry of S & S Painting of Kerrville, bottlenecks, the interchange was upgraded Texas, and a waterborne acrylic paint formu- primarily to increase traffic capacity and pro- lation specified by TxDOT and manufac- vide greater convenience for travelers. Wesley Skains, co- tured by Sherwin-Williams, all of the above According to TxDOT, the remaining top five owner and president are true. reasons for the project include improving air of S & S Painting, “There was a time when everything we quality by allowing continuous travel at high- Kerrville,Texas. painted used to be what we called ‘TxDOT er speeds; improving safety; improving local Below, a scale model gray,’” says Wesley Skains, the co-owner and access; and establishing flexibility with a shows how the fin- president of S & S Painting, which has 12 design compatible with future highway ished High Five years of experience working mainly on Texas improvements. Interchange will look. highway projects. “But in the last 10 years, The low bid of $262 million — which we’ve been using a lot of color in TxDOT became the largest contract ever let by the work. The focus has been on aesthetics, and state of Texas — was submitted by the H.B. the results have been very positive.” Zachry Construction Corp., a family-owned construction and industrial maintenance ser- LARGE SCALE vice company located in San Antonio. A discussion of the Dallas High Five pro- Construction began in 2002 and will be com- ject — which drew its name from the fact that pleted in three distinct phases to maximize it features five levels, the highest of which is project efficiency. Completion is scheduled 100 feet above the ground — would be for 2006, and the project is on schedule. 10 COATINGS SOLUTIONS / WINTER 2004 PROJECT PROFILE Vertical columns such as these support road- ways and feature vary- ing color schemes throughout the High Five Interchange. ty, is being warehoused at a Dallas Sherwin- Williams commercial store near the High Five site, and paint is delivered to the site daily, if necessary. Most of the paint is being sprayed, and painters stay on the move either with manlifts when painting the towering vertical columns that support the roadways, or with scaffold- ing that is fixed to the concrete rails being painted along side the roadways. The waterborne acrylic formulation, along with the fine spray tips used by S & S painters, have minimized overspray concerns, according to Skains, so painters have been able to work without the containment struc- tures that normally accompany bridge paint- ing work. As a result, S & S painters are mak- ing progress on the 7 million square feet of concrete they’ll ultimately finish as fast as con- Manlifts were used to FIVE COLOR SCHEMES struction allows. raise painters to the TxDOT personnel are collaborating “We’re doing 450,000 square feet a top levels of the inter- with H.B. Zachry personnel to manage the month,” says Skains. “The large columns go change, which reached complicated tasks of minimizing lane shut- slowly, because there’s a lot of up and down heights of 100 feet. downs while work is under way. on the man lifts. But when we’re rolling on Meanwhile, S & S painters, six of whom the bridge rails, we can really get after it.” are on the site full time, have been follow- Things move much slower when the brush ing up the construction crews since work begins, however. That’s when painters February 2004, applying the two-coat carefully cut-in the Lone Star design present acrylic system in five coordinated color on each of the vertical columns as well as the schemes specified by TxDOT. landscape artwork present along the sides of Color selection was a collaborative effort the underpasses throughout the interchanges. between TxDOT architect Richard Mason, But that alone may be the painters’ only project manager Dan Peden and Sherwin- major challenge. The acrylic demands ambi- Williams, which provided color sample ent temperatures of 45 degrees F or higher batches for testing on the interchange’s verti- and humidity less than 95 percent for proper cal columns. cure and as a result, days lost to weather in “What we were trying to do was make it the generally warm and arid Texas climate distinct from the rest of the Central have been few. Expressway,” says Peden. “Plus, we wanted to “It’s been going well,” says Skains. “We’re define the heart of the interchange. That’s moving right along.” where we used the beige, the green and the And that’s news that some 500,000 travel- terra cotta.” ers per day will be very happy to hear. A shade of green was also used to bring identity to the interchange’s fifth level, while terra cotta was used on the fourth level. Some colors didn’t make the final cut, according to Peden. “We rejected a lighter green as well as some other colors because of maintenance con- cerns,” says Peden. STORAGE NEAR SITE Roughly 60,000 gallons of the coating, which is produced for TxDOT at Sherwin- Murals such as this one line the sides of under- Williams’ Garland, Texas, production facili- passes, depicting local waterways and geography. 12 COATINGS SOLUTIONS / WINTER 2004.